Over 18 million citations from the international biomedical and life sciences journal literature back to 1948.

Updated daily.

80% of the citations have author-written abstracts.

80% of articles are in English language.

“Potential” link-outs to free and pay-per-view full-text journal articles in over 7,000 journals, and some molecular biology and other books.

Access to document delivery services from medical libraries through LoansomeDoc.

Set up, store, and run table of contents-like searches for current awareness purposes using MyNCBI.

Veterinary Journal Coverage
Go to Journals in NCBI Databasesto see a list of the approximately 180 important veterinary journals that are indexed for PubMed. Additional animal-related articles can also be found in non-veterinary journals.

Note: Some clinical and international veterinary journals are NOT indexed, such as, Advances in Veterinary Dermatology, Equine Veterinary Education, Veterinary Economics, and Veterinary Medicine. To check which journals are indexed, click on Journals Database on the PubMed home page.

Guidelines for Searching

Subjects -- Free Text Keywords

Single AND Relationship between subject keywords or phrases
Enter keywords/search terms in any order; PubMed will automatically supply the AND connectors; 2-3 separate search elements are usually sufficient, e.g., [disease], [species], [other aspect, such as diagnosis, treatment, etc].

fleas dogs insecticides

[PubMed searches as: fleas AND dogs AND insecticides]

tibia osteotomy dogs

monkeypox prairie dogs

west nile virus diagnosis horses

leptospir* diagnosis dogs

[Truncation for word variations]

linkage retina dogs cornell

[Author’s institutional affiliation]

coronavirus animal

[Include all animal species]

parvovirus review

[Add “review” or use Limits menu]

johne’s disease cattle

[PubMed also searches synonyms like paratuberculosis; click Details

“von willebrand” cryoprecipitate dogs

[Use double quotes for adjacency or exact phrase
word order]

foot and mouth disease occurrence

[Automatic mapping will search as a phrase and MeSH
heading]

Multiple AND/OR Relationships between subject keywords or phrases using Boolean Connectors
Enter AND, OR, NOT in UPPER CASE; use parenthesis to group similar topics or synonyms together.

dirofilariasis OR dirofilaria OR heartworm

[Use synonyms to broaden a topic]

(pseudorabies OR aujeszky*) AND swine

[See “standardized” species terms]

Subjects -- Standardized Subject Headings
Use the Mesh Database accessed from the PubMed home page to:

Locate the appropriate standardized Medical Subject Headings,

See brief descriptions or definitions of those headings,

Show the hierarchy or relationship between headings, and

Build an effective MEDLINE search strategy using this controlled vocabulary.

MeSH headings are used to provide standardized subject indexing for articles in MEDLINE. They can increase the consistency of search results by minimizing synonym and other variations in keywords or text terms in common usage. View the MeSH headings applied to each article from the Citation format. For veterinary topics, use the same approach as text word searching. Follow prompts and click appropriate buttons.

Authors
Enter last name first and/or second initials, no punctuation.

thrall ma

kollias gv

[Don’t use Jr. or III designations]

center sa [au]

[Use tag for common names]

morgan* [au]

[Use truncation & tag if initials are not known]

burton-wurster n

[Enter names with hyphen]

hackett rp ainsworth dm

[For papers written by both authors together; AND is assumed]

ducharme ng OR nixon aj

[Enter OR for articles by either or both authors]

Journal Titles
Enter full title or MEDLINE abbreviation, or use the Journals Database accessed from the PubMed home page.

Limit to “Animals” from the Limits tab. You can also add “animals” but that can pick up research papers plus some human articles.
acepromazine animals [in all species]
anesthetics animals [in all species]

Standardized Indexing Terms for Species and Animal Groups
Each index term listed below includes the accompanying topics: